We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and if you want
to support our work, you can head on over to the Federalist dot com
slash donate. You can donate to the Federalists Real News Initiative. We're so
excited about that, so head over there if you want to support our work.
You can also access the premium version of our website as well. We
are joined today once again by Jeffrey Kaine, who is the policy director over
at the Tech Integrity Project. We last had Jeff on the show to talk
about his book The Perfect Police State. He is and has been writing working
on these issues as they relate to China for years and years. Is one
of the foremost thinkers and writers and researchers on this issue. So we're very
excited to have Jeff back on the show. Thanks so much for joining us,
Jeff, Thanks for having me, Emily. Now, if you could,
maybe if people didn't hear the first episode that we did basically take us
through how you ended up zeroing in on China issues. That would be awesome.
So I was an investigative journalist for many years in East Asia. I
had been in China, and I had been covering China since two thousand and
eight, so the two thousand and eight Olympics was in Beijing. I had
been building a specialty in the country, and in particular it's technologies, the
technologies that the Chinese Communist Party was unveiling and unfolding and that it wanted to
use to build its police state, its surveillance state. So I had been
going in to a region of China over the years called Hinjong, which is
home to the Wager population. The Leaguers are a mostly Muslim group, a
minority in China that has been persecuted relentlessly by the Chinese government. They're treated
as terrorists. They're called you know, religious names. There. Recently,
there was a report that showed that mosques have been desecrated and destroyed by the
by the Chinese Communist Party, and so I had been covering this story.
I had been getting really interested interested in this particular region of the world because
I saw that what was happening there was going to reverberate for years to come
all over the world. That you know, even though this was an obscure
place, most Americans weren't really paying attention to what was happening to the Wagers.
It's not exactly something that you would, you know, turn on the
news and see it like headline news every evening. But I saw there that
there was something happening that was going to matter big. And what was happening
was that China was using this region as the testing ground for the world's most
sophisticated and most brutal surveillance state ever. I mean, we're talking about a
surveillance state on the level of a science fiction novel. So, you know,
there's the old movie Minority Report, there's you know, George Orwell's nineteen
eighty four. There was a whole genre of books and movies from the twentieth
century that tried to predict what the world would look like in you know,
in generations. And what this region showed of Shinjong is that we have already
obtained this We've obtained this nineteen eighty four level of technology. And it was
in China that the government was beginning to roll this out. The entire population
there was being surveilled by cameras, the biggest camera network in the world.
They were using an artificial intelligence system that's called skynet. Literally Skynet as from
Terminator, and they were using this to surveil everybody. The scoop up data
about everything they were doing every day. So what time they woke up in
the morning, what time they went to bed, you know, what they
did at work that day. Did they stand and seeing the national anthem?
And at what time did they do it? Were they sick today, do
they have the flu? And you know, trying to compile all these minuscule
facts about their lives and then predict what they're going to do. This is
predictive policing. The AI, within about a year, got out of control
and started predicting that just about everybody was a terrorist or a criminal. The
Chinese Communist Party had established a state that we have never seen before because literally
anybody could be taken away to a concentration camp because a computer system said that
they might be a criminal in the future. That really is the stuff of
a sci fi terror. I mean, that is what I grew up reading
books on and to see it there in real life in China was shocking and
terrifying and devastating. The there were one point eight billion people who were taken
away to concentration camps. This is the largest internment of a group since the
Holocaust, and the US State Department has since declared this a genocide, one
of the big genocides of the world, happening under our noses right now in
China. This is what got me interested in this topic. I gathered material,
spent many years living in China, and then I moved to Turkey,
where many of the leaguer refugees were headed. I spent about four years interviewing
them, documenting their stories, and also locating a number of defected spies from
the Chinese Communist Party, from a group called the Ministry of State Security,
who had inside knowledge and inside data about how these systems work. So I
was the first journalist to get to them. They revealed facts that were just
beyond terrifying about how the CCP was surveilling everyone, I mean everyone, you
can imagine. They showed me data that suggested that even CCP companies that were
exporting these cameras to other countries they had a direct line. They were using
that to spy on governments all over the world, and meanwhile this was infecting
countries everywhere, this Chinese technology. Now, what was most alarming about this
story to me was that American big tech companies had a hand in helping create
this. Companies like Apple had been involved in slave labor. Apple had obviously
not directly involved in slave labor, but had contracted to a firm that was
using slave labor from this oppress weaker population. Microsoft had helped build the AI
ecosystem of developers and technologies that has since propelled this surveillance state in China.
Other companies, you know, Amazon, Amazon runs the web services company AWS.
They've been deeply involved in China. And as I got deeper and deeper
into this topic, I realized that the surveillance state that China had created,
it was also an American problem because American big tech companies are the ones that
are working there, that are selling them these technologies that are helping the state
do what it wants to do. It really is a horrific situation, and
we haven't done enough to address it. You know, I was going to
ask about that actually because I think The last time we spoke was before the
sort of the crackdown legislatively, so from Congress the it's called the Weird Labor
Force Protection Act, right is the Yes, that's the one. So I
helped write that bill in Congress, I returned to DC. I spent a
year in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and it was kind of interesting because
I had been a foo of the Chinese Communist Party in China for all those
years. They knew who I was. They kicked me out. In the
end, they detained me, and I was in Hinjong. I was doing
my work and they said, look, we know who you are. You
have to buy a ticket out and leave, or else you're in big trouble.
They made it clear that I would be placed on or arrastif I stayed
any longer. So the next morning out I bought my ticket and I was
out of China. I hadn't been back since then. It's been six years
now, very long time, and the country has changed enormously since I was
there. So I returned. So after I moved to Turkey, I returned
to the States and then I took all the work I was doing and I
joined Congress and I had a hand in writing and advising some of the sanctions,
including this bill, the Weaker Force Labor Prevention Act. What that bill
did is it sought to cut off slave labor force labor from China by placing
the onus on private American companies to prove that they are not using slave labor
in their imports to America. Previously, under anti slavery law in the US,
the rule was that the US government would have to bring evidence or prove
or show a suspicion that this was potentially a product made the slave labor.
But now any company that is in reporting a product from China, there's a
chance, a strong chance that that has gone through Shinjong at some point somewhere
in the supply chain, and a strong chance that if it did go through
Shinjong, then slave labor was used to create that product. And now you
know, those products can mostly not be imported. There are some exceptions,
there are some loopholes in the law which are now being closed up this this
bill. I consider it to be very important in you know, in the
in the fight against global slavery, because previously, you know, there was
no such restriction on these kinds of products. I mean it was it was
like a free for all. I mean, you could import this about anything
and get it by customs if you had just the right paperwork or just the
right lawyer to say the right thing. But now we have new documentation that
shows just how bad this genocide is, and so we need countermeasures to ensure
that, you know, this genocide is not being funded by US companies.
Yeah, it's a really interesting bill that I think probably can be replicated actually
in other areas of the economy. And one of the questions I was going
to ask, Jeff if somebody follows this so closely, and so closely in
fact that you actually worked crafting this bill is to the extent that Shinjong was
being used as a testing ground for some of these immense, large scale surveillance
systems, these kind of programs of oppression, repression and conditioning, all of
that. Since the global community has sort of turned its eyes to Shinjong,
things like the Weager Force Labor Protection Act, things like the US finally declaring
genocide what was happening in Shinjong and genocide? How have if they have some
of those experimentations in surveillance and conditioning et cetera. How have they migrated perhaps
beyond the borders of Shinjong If they have and in ways, you know what,
how has that testing ground you know, proven itself to be a testing
ground since the global community has sort of shifted its attention to the extent that
it actually has to Shinjong. A First, the testing ground spread across China
kinda had some of the worst COVID lockdowns in the world. I mean we're
talking facial recognition surveillance place everywhere in cities like Shanghai and Beijing. Drone sent
out around the streets that were surveiling the streets to ensure that nobody was leaving
their apartment at all, even if it was just to grab groceries. There
were people who I know who live in Shanghai who would be sitting on their
balcony, you know, smoking a cigarette or having a beer, just to
wind down for the evening, and a Chinese drone would fly by and take
their photo and then they would be sent a fine for the enormous crime under
the Chinese Communist Party of you know, having a cigarette on your balcony under
lockdown. It's like, you know, what is that? That is?
How far the CCP wants to go in building a surveilled state, and it
wants to export this too. This is not something that is limited only to
China anymore. We've seen, you know, in the past five years with
the expansion of AI, the expansion of facial recognition, new advances and semi
deductor technology. We've seen how far the CCP wants to go to export this
tech and what they want to do with it overseas as well. Now,
luckily here in the US, we've blocked off a lot of these technologies.
There are sanctions against Chinese cameras, for example, Chinese AI, so you
know, that is not something that we have to directly worry about right now,
but it's spreading everywhere else around the world. So sub Saharan Africa,
South America, you know, Central Asia, mostly poorer countries that are vulnerable
that have you know, dictators who want to maintain power indefinitely pass it to
their kids. They're they're calling on China, and they're calling on Chinese companies
like Huawei and all these other companies to build their own surveillance states. So
China is the model. We are locked in a cold war that is not
an overstatement, and this Cold war is divided between the authoritarian regimes that support
China and then here in America the US and our allies who support the principles
of democracy. So, you know, so personally, like, I think
the Trump administration did a great job of kicking off these sensions, of going
hard on this topic and of not bowing down to you know, what has
happened with you know, with China in the past five years. They have
stood up to Chinese companies. Now, sadly, on the other hand,
a lot of this progress has slowed down. The Biden administration has failed to
ban and spin off TikTok, a major threat to our ecosystem here, I
mean a major trojan horse that is just a CCP product, that is that
that is you know, being used to spread Hamas propaganda and other types of
propaganda in America. A lot of this has slowed down under the Biden administration,
and it's worrisome. It's worrisome because China is now making more and more
inroads and there are more and more of these companies coming here, but also
more American companies still going over there and opening up shop and helping the CCP
obtain these goals. Hey everybody, this is Sarah Carter from the Sarah Carter
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let's talk actually about TikTok because you agree with obviously everything that you just said.
And you know, like many conservative news outlets, we've been covering TikTok
a lot before. Many people were paying attention to US China connections, and
there's so much that's obviously problematic. You have so many comparisons that are obviously
app you know, like the Soviet Union basically owning NBC in you know,
nineteen seventy two. All of that one hundred percent true. Are there things
that people even aren't thinking about when it comes to TikTok? Obviously, the
events of October seventh, the backlash, the aftermath have exposed the dangers or
illustrated it, I think in a way that is easier for people to see
and understand just the pragmatic challenges of TikTok being under essentially, you know,
potentially being under the sway or influence of the CCP at any given moment.
They algorithm, being you know, vulnerable to influence at any given moment.
Are the things people don't think about when it comes to TikTok? Are the
things that really worry you that you don't see getting enough attention when it comes
to TikTok? Well, I was just in Israel. I was there for
two weeks right after the October seventh attacks, and I met Israelis in the
military, including top military officials, technologists, people who work on these same
exact topics, and they said the exact same thing. They were looking at
TikTok, and they said, why am I sitting in Tel Aviv, Israel
right now and getting bombarded with Prohamas messages after a major terrorist attack on our
country? I mean, could you imagine in the aftermath of nine to eleven
American teenagers are being flooded with you know, Osamovan Lauden is a good guy,
and you know Hamas is a great organization, and Alkieda is just standing
up to oppression. You know, I imagine the ridiculousness of that ever happening,
And how the American public would react. Well, over in Israel,
that has happened to a lot of people who are using TikTok, and it's
just it's puzzling to them. They're saying, like, this is this is
so bizarre because nobody in Israel wants to look at this right now. So
why is the algorithm pushing this on us? And the probable answer is,
well, because you know, this algorithm is effectively controlled by the Chinese Communist
Party. Under Chinese law, if the CCP does want to get access to
data and does want to use that algorithm, TikTok is required in China to
allow the CCP to do that. There's really no dividing line. There's no
boundary between what the CCP wants and what TikTok is allowed to do for its
own profit making endeavors. And that's one of the things that a lot of
Americans often forget or don't understand about dealing with these Chinese companies. They don't
have a separation of public and private or separation of powers like we have in
America. There's no due process, there's no judicial system that values the rights
the people. The Chinese judicial system and the CCP is set up to enforce
the power of the state, the power of the party. It is not
there to look out for the private interests of a company like TikTok or its
parent company by Dance. So I think that explains a lot of what we're
seeing. That's also why here in America come off propagain has just been out
of control. There's even been you know, Osama bin Laden's letter to America
spreading on TikTok and being picked up by American gen z ers and you know,
being praised as this great this great letter, this great form of thinking
from a major terrorist who just said that America created its own problems and that
America is responsible for nine to eleven. You know, it's just, you
know, TikTok really takes problems of social media to a new level and actively
pedals real propaganda. You know. One of the other points. You know,
there's been this whole debate over misinformation in the last few years. You
know, like, is Twitter spreading disinformation? Is disinformation going to meet people,
you know, damage our society or do something crazy? Well, I
mean, you know, people who are saying that should stop worrying about accents,
stop worrying about Facebook and go look at TikTok because that's where the actual
propaganda is being spread. Yeah, can you talk more about that's also interesting
in the wake of October seventh, but also the sort of Putin China relationship
in the wake of October seventh is interesting, but was already interesting before October
seventh, and they had their recently obviously had the tenth anniversity of the Belton
Road Initiative in Beijing, where Putin came actually one of his first trips abroad,
I think maybe his second trip abroad since the war in Ukraine began,
because he's under so many international sanctions and all of that, but he went
to Beijing, he celebrated, handshake with did the handshakes with Shijin Ping,
the photo ops. How has China standing shifted in the world, especially in
light of more reporting about Belton Road, the problems with Belton Road, more
reporting about shin Jong, more international attention to what happened in Chinjunk, but
also these huge hot conflicts in the Middle East in Ukraine. You've been paying
attention to this for a really long time. What is China sur stature?
How has it been affected over the last couple of years. China's goal is
to be a superpower that rivals America. It wants to be a nation that
can spread its own authoritarian ideology, and it wants to do that through alliances
with Putin's Russia with other authoritarian countries around the world. So Russia's stature was
severely diminished after the war in Ukraine about two years ago. The invasion of
Ukraine led to the collapse of the Russian currency. It later recovered, but
it did collapse. At the beginning. There were heavy sanctions that the US,
the EU, numerous other countries placed on Russia, and so it was
really looking for a while like the Russian elite that supported Putin was potentially going
to go down or at least be signific could lead damaged in some way.
A lot of that never happened, and part of the reason is because China
stepped in. So at the beginning, China did not issue a statement explicitly
supporting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. The statement that they would issue would
would usually be along the lines of we call for peace, we call for
a resolution to this conflict. So something that's vague and doesn't take sides.
That's how the CCP operates on the international stage. At the beginning, they
put this cloak of non alignment over major wars. There's also something that they're
doing now with Israel and Hamas. And as the cloak is you know,
pulled over people's eyes, the CCP spends the next few years moving in dining
backdoor deals, you know, shaking hands with some of these dictators, people
like Putin in his allies, and then setting that so and then the CCP
will set itself up as the patron as the you know, the the bene
factor of another authoritarian regime like Russia. Russia was weak, it was vulnerable,
it was suffering heavy losses in Ukraine. And now China has stepped in
with foreign direct investment, with Belton Road, with many of these technology exports
that Putin is now using to surveil the country. Also with some actions that
are in contravention of international sanctions. It's been selling certain types of ammunition and
weaponrys of Russia that is essentially arming Russia in the war in Ukraine. This
has been a two year campaign to take advantage of Russia's weakness after the Ukraine
War and to turn Russia into a satellite state of China. That's their ultimate
goal. Now, obviously, Russia is a big place, and you know,
a dictator like Putin is not going to simply bow to China in exchange
for help. It's going to be a lot more complicated than that. But
China does now have the upper hand over Russia. This is the opposite of
the Cold War or forty years ago, when the Soviet Union was the one
calling the shots ultimately in the international communists order. Now it is China that's
calling the shots, and it's China that is the international center of gravity for
the authoritarian world. So what does that mean going forward? I think that
we need to be worried about a few key points. That Russia will do
more of what China wants in the future, and that you know, could
include an invasion of Taiwan. Russia would probably immediately back China because this mirror
is its own invasion in Ukraine. And if that invasion Taiwan in Taiwan happens,
and it probably will happen sometime this decade, that's going to pit Russia
and China together against the entire free war world that is opposed to the war
in Ukraine and that is opposed to a war in Taiwan. We're essentially seeing
the emergence of an access that consists of Russia and China and also Iran,
which back Kamas and Hesbala in the Middle East. These three countries together are
growing closer and closer because of world geopolitics, and this is something that we
need to be extremely worried about because this is not like the Axis of Evil
after nine to eleven. Those are three countries that worked somewhat together, but
weren't really you know, cohering into an actual alliance that was trying to take
down America. This is an actual alliance that's forming between three countries that want
to end democracy, you know, and secular democracy, and you know,
certain types of religion, Christianity, certain types of worship. They do want
to enforce their own state on the rest of the world. And it's interesting.
I'm always curious how China observers interpret the rhetoric of Chijinping, because on
the one hand, he says sometimes I think he says different things at different
times. Obviously these are coming through translations, and that can be clumsy in
and of itself, but you know, he talks about the sort of Chinese
style socialism and world peace, and he countures everything in those terms. We
saw some similar rhetoric in his meeting with Biden here in the US, which
was fascinating in of itself, And maybe, Jeff, you have some thoughts
to offer on that. But what should people be aware of when you know
there are and some China apologists here in the US. Will you say that,
well, this is what she Jinping is saying. You know, he's
entirely on defense when it comes to Taiwan. Yeah, he's only responding to
American incursions and American aggression. He's only responding to American rhetorical aggression. He's
only helping putin you know whatever with his own territory. Blah blah blah,
all of these sort of anti Western, anti American points of rhetoric that I
think she didn't paying is sort of careful to exploit by talking about peace and
the world order, et cetera, et cetera. What should people be aware
of when they're kind of trying to translate I don't mean that literally, but
kind of translate what he's saying versus what he means. Look at the CCP
playbook. What he says is not really what it means, and this is
what she Diinping and his allies have become masters of. It's a rhetorical style
that fools a lot of Western observers. Once you learn Chinese and you go
in and see what he's actually saying behind the scenes, what Chinese state media
is in that's not published in English, then if becomes clearer what these authoritarian
leaders are all about, and that's ending the Western order, ending liberal democracy
worldwide. That's their goal. They want China to replace that position of the
United States, and they want China to be calling the shots. Often when
she Jinping is talking, as he spoke in San Francisco, I'll say certain
terms of phrase that are that sound friendly but actually aren't that friendly. And
those terms of phrase will be phrases such as, you know, we call
for a resolution to hostilities, or we call for a unified, a unified
and a peaceful South China. See we call for peace in the South China.
See we call for you know, we call for For example, they'll
often say we call for an end to the division of the Korean Peninsula and
an end to the armistice of nineteen fifty three that ended the Korean War.
Okay, so what does Shi Jinping really mean when he says these things.
Well, when it comes to Korea, which is South Korea has a major
American presidence. South Korea is one of our greatest allies that had been through
us through thick and thin, through some of the hardest times in you know,
the history of the world. So many people died in the Korean War
of nineteen fifty to nineteen fifty three, and the US has been right there
with them. What Chi Jinping means is that if we end the armistice,
we end the Korean War. The Korean War is still going on. But
what he's saying is that the Korean Peninsula should be united under North Korean rule.
What he's saying is that North Korea should have the right to call the
shots over the Korean Peninsula and maybe form a confederation with South Korea that will
eventually involve, you know, having North Korean leaders have a say over South
Korea's democratic affairs. He's not saying that he wants actual peace on the Korean
Peninsula. He's saying that a stable authoritarian regime that's loyal to China is much
better than a democratic, wavering regime that tends to side with the US when
it comes to military and national security. And there are all kinds of examples
of this. I mean, it's not only you know, the problems on
the Korean Ensula, it's not only the South China Sea. But even when
it comes to you know, what happens in America. You know, the
Chinese state media will often comment on our own domestic politics. So you know,
there will be like after the George Floyd protests or you know what's happened
in recent years with American culture wars. The CCP will come in with its
state media and we'll say, look at how bad things are in America.
But they'll often say, if only the American people would be more like China,
would realize the wisdom of our ways, the wisdom of the CCP,
the American democracy would not have to deal with all this chaos with the you
know, the right right of yeah. Like so that the rise of these
leftist movements and the rise of these you know, these political movements, it's
it's all a result of the American system, and they need to understand what
you know, what pieces and harmony is. That's how they portray themselves.
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know. Also, a lot of people have recently been dismissive of China's potential
as an aggressor, or maybe their strength as an aggressor, because of internal
problems with the Chinese economy. I mean, obviously real estate is a huge
part of that puzzle. But as somebody who follows this much more closely than
I do, Jeff, what's your read on how the a the state of
the Chinese economy and b how that might be affecting their geopolitical strength and stature.
That's a good question. So one of the problems with the Chinese economy
is that we actually don't know a lot about it because even though the CCP
does publish economic data, it's not clear how much of it is accurate,
and there are lots of you know, questionable numbers in there. So like,
for example, I think one of the great examples is education levels in
China. That's like one of the basic benchmarks for any country. We actually
don't really know what China's education system is truly like, and you know,
how many people are going through and getting actual, you know, highly skilled
educations versus getting a paper mill diploma or certificate. So there, you know,
there are potentially problems in the workforce in China, potentially you know,
problems involving companies masking their debts. We don't know how much corporate debt really
exists in China because state owned companies, by the way, every a lot
of these companies in China are state owned, and so they have the bureaucratic
cover to you know, to move around funds and to hide their debts and
to hide bad assets and so forth. We don't know how much corporate debt
they really have because they engage in practices of shuffling debt to other state on
enterprises in exchange for favors. And you know, this shuffling happens for years
and years. It just masks debt, and then we don't really we can't
see the extent of the problem. We can really only estimate it. So
there are huge weaknesses in the Chinese political systems that culminate in this kind of
economic problem that's happening. That the real estate sector has been overheating. There
has been a building spree over the last thirty years. I mean, China
was a booming economy with a booming population. The one child policy, so
the Chinese policy of having you know, each family being only limited to one
child has now damaged that boom because what it means is the population is starting
to shrink. There are now going to be more elderly people than there will
be young people replacing them, and that is a certain depth for a booming
economy. So there are all kinds of these macro issues, these bigger picture
problems that now exist in China that people were not paying attention to back when
China was on the rise, back when it was becoming what is becoming,
a lot of people, you know, these China analysts and watchers, economists
and political economists, they were observing Chinese data and observing China's successes, and
I think putting the car, putting the cart before the horse. They were
trying to make the case that because China is so successful economically, it's because
of X, Y and Z, and they would write the narrative in reverse
and then find the sources of that success. But what we're seeing now is
that these same sources of the success are also the sources of the downfall,
or, as the old saying goes, in the beginning is the end.
I think that's what we're seeing right now with the Chinese economy. That's so
interesting. And I actually I wanted to ask even about the name of the
Tech Integrity Project. I really like the name of that. I really like
the name of the group, because there's, you know, an important aspect
of the question of tech, the question of integrity, putting them both together
and particularly in the direction of China, Can you tell us us about what
void you're hoping to fill and what everything you hope to accomplish is through the
Tech Integrity Project in the future Core. So you know, regular Americans are
more and more concerned about the lack of integrity and their technology. Americans want
privacy, they want security. They want to be sure that, you know,
big tech companies are not snooping up their data. They want to be
sure that they are not in fact products. That's one of the big problems
right now in the American tech ecosystem. The consumer of the smartphone, the
person using the computer, they have become the product because their data is so
valuable and it's being sold off to god knows who. I mean, we
don't even know who's consuming a lot of this data that's floating around out there
in the ether sphere. You know that you can learn so much about any
private person just by having access to that data from data brokers. We're focusing
on China because we think that China is really the major threat. So the
fact that American companies would play games with the privacy and security of Americans data
by working with the Chinese Communist Party and working with major Chinese companies is really
a red flag. It means that they have given up their integrity because they
no longer stand with American democracy. These are American companies that should side with
American values, and instead they're compromising their values and even compromising the security of
their own American consumers to please the Chinese Communist Party and to ensure that they
continue to have market access to the CCP. This needs to be a campaign
issue. There has been a lot of progress over the years in separating American
companies from from the CCP aligned interests, but so much more needs to be
done. I mean, we're only at the start of this, and we
really want to get Republican candidates on board and sign our pledge, which calls
for them to find ways to not to not work in ways that will counteract
American democracy and American national security. We need to find more ways to separate
these American operations from China and to ensure that our data here is safe and
that our own American national security is safe. I can give a lot of
examples, like specific examples that we should be worried about, but also,
you know, I want to be mindful of not talking to you. Watch
I'll give it fo you. Oh no, I mean, I was just
one question, is basically just like how you know, when we saw that
awful bipartisan bill on TikTok you such an important issue and such a questionable bill.
Is that a difficulty in sort of ensuring that this is targeted and precise
and not maybe exploited by you know, the the kind of blob so to
speak, in order to you know, advance their own maybe ultra hawkish perspectives
and their benefactors perspectives whatever it is. Uh. But also there's such a
need in the space for you know, somewhat real hawkishness. I just imagine
that that's you know, part of the problem here too. Well. Yeah,
so there there is a lot of hawkishness in DC right now. And
you know, as you called it, the blog, the foreign policy blog
that who was it who pointed that term? Originally I think it was,
uh, it was it was one of the Obama administration national security the advisors
and you know Ben Roads. Yeah, the blog that this blog that goes
around DC to government offices trying to keep themselves employed by putting in place,
you know, their own policies and their own ideas, even if those ideas
don't really fit with the needs of the American nation. That's what he was
getting at. So yeah, I agree. You know, we don't need
a sledgehammer here. We need something more confined and focus. We don't need
to go around smashing hammers and destroying everything that might be related to China in
some way. But we do need to worry about the ways that specific American
companies are working directly in China in ways that are counteracting the American national interests.
Like ultimately, any American company, just by nature of having the flag
of the United States, really needs to think about the American national interests and
American democracy and American consumers. With citizenship comes responsibilities. It's not all about
rights. These companies need to see that they have responsibilities to the American Republic.
That's what we're trying to get across specific examples. I've done a lot
of work over the years documenting Microsoft a very egregious actor in China. Microsoft
has built the AI Laboratory Microsoft Research Asia that train many of the technologists who
went on to start these companies that are now sanctioned by the US and by
the EU. These are companies that were involved in creating much of the facial
recognition voice recognition, the AI, the advanced semiconductors, of all these kinds
of technologies that are being used to create a surveillance state, that have been
used to oppress people around the world and to curtail democracy around the world.
I mean, there's so much here that a company like Microsoft should be responsible
for and does have blood on its hands for. But this has not been
addressed because these companies simply say like, look, I mean, we're just
following the market. We're following the need for you to make a profit.
We have to please our shareholders, and our shareholders want us to be in
China because China has been a growing market. China has a lot of consumers.
It's one point two billion people who could be using Windows, and so
we would rather preserve market access by compromising the principles of American democracy back at
home. Yeah, it's just crazy to think about. But I'm really eager
to follow all of your work at the Tech Integrity Project. Jeff Kane again
the policy director over the Tech Integrity Project. You can learn more at Tech
Integrityproject dot org. Jeff, thank you so much for coming back on the
show. Thanks for having me. Emily. Of course you have been listening
to another edition of The Federalist, or a radio hour. I'm Emili Kiashinsky,
culture editor here at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more.
Until then, he lover's a freedom and anxious for the fray the old mo